The Internet system, for example, which now encompasses virtually the entire world with a network, provides means to communicate in a variety of ways including print, audio and video. In the past long distance communications between individuals was dominated by the telephone and its interconnecting networks. Today this role is being rapidly supplanted by communications over the Internet utilizing a variety of paths and apparatus.
A problem presented by communication of widely disbursed instruments is that of responding quickly and appropriately to an emergency. In the past, the United States has utilized the “9-1-1” emergency call system. The goal of this system was to provide means for identifying the location of any instrument which initiated an emergency call. This system responded to the possibility of providing this information even if the person initiating the call was incapable, for any reason, either of providing the location information or of remaining on the line long enough to provide this information. The location system correlated the calling telephone number, which could be determined readily by the system, with the physical location of the telephone prestored in a data base.
Problems arose when the telephone was moved without a corresponding change in the data base, or when the telephone was accessed through a private branch exchange (PBX) system, or an equivalent. In many instances, structures such as PBX's or their equivalent access a large number of telephones through a single common telephone number.
The location system was improved by the disclosure of U.S. Pat. No. 5,347,567 (Moody et al.), which identified a specific station by providing unique indicia for each station. This unique indicia was converted to an electronic format by apparatus at the telephone which, when polled by the system, transmitted the data to the system.
These systems are all directed to relatively simple, essentially hard-wired systems which access the network using known protocol for both the communication and the 9-1-1 systems.
The necessity of determining the location of a calling station using, for example, the Internet is at least as critical, and in some cases may be more critical, than determining the location of a telephone in a conventional telephone system. An article in the March 1998 issue of READER'S DIGEST, entitled, “Cry for Help on the Internet”, dramatically illustrates this problem. In the article, a 20-year old female student working late into the night at a college library in Kerave near Helsinki, Finland became violently ill. She was alone in the library and because of her illness was unable to move from her chair, consequently her only access to the outside world was via the Internet. She logged into a chat room in the Internet and explained her plight. A seven year old boy in Denton, Tex., who was just about to log off the Internet, noticed the message. Initially he felt that it was a hoax, but, as the messages continued and after he obtained the location of the sender, he became convinced that the message was legitimate. The boy had his parents call the sheriff's office, who in turn contacted authorities in the city of Kerave to rescue the Finnish student. This story illustrates that an emergency response system similar to that provided by the 9-1-1 system is also needed for the Internet and in other multiple transmission source networks. It also illustrates, because of the different systems involved and geographic distances, that such a system would be much more complex and different in nature that any existing telephone communication type emergency system.
On the Internet, unlike the conventional telephone system, each telephone may be connected to the Internet through a variety of different equipments with different routing connections and protocols, making it impractical to use previous polling methods to obtain stored location indicia at the telephone.
It is to this problem of an emergency response that the present invention is directed. It is a system for interpreting data transmitted by a remote station through a multiple transmission source network and determining the exact physical location of the initiator.